


In the Aftermath

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Harry/Snape - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-27
Updated: 2010-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when it's over and the duty's done. (Spoilers for HBP, nothing for DH)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this is beautiful and poetic or just fancy rubbish. You tell me, and I'll take your word.

Voldermort drops and there to his left is Snape. Harry stares at him, watches the way he sits perfectly still. He raises his wand. Snape still doesn’t move. He takes a step forward, and another and the end of his wand is pressing hard into the soft bit of flesh under Snape’s chin. Snape doesn’t even blink. They stand there so long, the cavalry has time to appear. Hermione inches Harry back from Snape, asking questions to try and get his attention. Harry hears nothing and only lets go of his wand when Hermione forces open his fingers.

*

“Harry,” Hermione’s voice is soft with an edge of careful.

“I couldn’t do it.” Harry looks up from the book he’s been browsing. His voice is even and tired. The voice of a man who’s been too long in the fighting. “I should have.”

“No.” Hermione drops next to Harry on the sofa, reaches over and strokes his hair the way she’d seen Mrs. Weasley do on occasion. “You’re not ruthless like that.”

“I never should have let you tell me.”

Hermione smiles bitterly and squeezes Harry’s shoulder. “Yes, you should have. If I hadn’t, you’d have killed him, and that goes against the whole point of everything he set up.”

“I know.” Harry sighs and closes the book. “He’ll be let go, then?”

“Most likely, but he’ll probably have no place to stay.”

Harry looks around the small apartment he’s been keeping for the roof it allows over his head. “Figures.” Hermione doesn’t ask, but Harry can feel the question. “Of all the people I can sympathize with at the end of this mess it’s the one person I never even liked.” He smiles just a little. “Dotty old man probably had the whole thing planned.”

“Probably. Albus was always fairly sneaky.”

“Yeah, he was.”

They sit in silence for a long while, Hermione’s hand still brushing through Harry’s hair.

*

He stops by the graves in the little cemetery every week and stares at the names of the people he shouldn’t be surprised he’s lost. The flowers he picked along the road go on Mrs. Weasley’s grave, and he stares at Ron’s grave trying to think of something to say. “I miss you,” he finally manages. “Things are still winding down. Death Eaters are still getting gathered, but it’s getting quieter. Everyone loves your dad as minister. He’s offered to let me stay at the house.” Harry looks down the line. There’s Bill and Fred. Percy’s not there, but he’s not been seen for two years. Ginny and George and Charlie all try to live at the Burrow, but when Harry goes, he can almost hear them marking time until their own deaths, and he can’t stand to be in a house that silent when it never knew how to be before everything happened.

When he looks up, Snape is standing a few feet away. Harry can’t manage the energy to do more than glare. He watches Snape walk towards him and doesn’t bother with his wand. Snape just stands next to him and looks at the headstones. He holds out a slip of paper to Harry.

Lot 27, it reads, along with an address. Harry looks at Snape. “And?”

“You’ll find Mr. Weasley buried there. He was one of Albus’s spies, killed during a mission. He was attempting to retrieve some very needed information at the time, but a hero’s death can not always lead to a hero’s burial. You can have him moved. Tell the man in the cottage that I sent you to retrieve the body.”

Harry stares at Snape. “The trick?”

“It is simply what it is, Potter. Another promise I made to Albus before everything went where it went.”

Harry snorts and looks away, watches a bird fly low over the fence. “Is this how people will do it now? Voldermort dies, and we find something else to leave unnamed for the fear of it?”

“We leave it unnamed for the horror of it, Potter. There’s no evil quite like what’s just been done. Calling it a ‘war’ makes it too simple. It makes people forget.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then we’re back to where we’ve always been. Good day, Potter.” Snape turns and leaves as quietly as he’s shown up. There’s no flashy billowing of his cloak or clicking of his heels. He seems to simply float away, as if he’s no longer really in the world.

Harry looks at the paper again and leaves in the opposite direction. He bolsters himself for the news he has to give the remaining Weasleys. He wonders if they’re enough in the world to even respond. There is a part of him that almost hopes not.

*

Percy is properly buried on the first warm Saturday of the year. No one cries. Harry wonders on the idea of being so far into grief you can’t actually have it anymore and looks up to see Snape in the distance, his black layers make him look like the Angel of Death, come down to watch the finality of his handiwork. Harry tracks him from the corner of his eye until the end of the service when Snape actually walks straight to Arthur. He doesn’t offer his hand, just a few words. “He was always very brave.”

Ginny looks prepared to hit him, and Harry feels a small dot of hope for the fiery girl he once knew. Arthur merely swallows and nods, holding out his hand. “Thank you, Severus.”

Snape doesn’t take the hand, merely nods at them all and leaves swiftly. Harry watches him retreat and almost wants to run to him, to walk by his side. He shakes off the feeling and listens as Ginny mutters terrible things about Snape that momentarily put everyone within hearing back to their school days. It’s the briefest of respites, but Harry feels lighter for it. He kisses the top of Ginny’s head and hugs her close, knowing that she’s still wishing he’ll somehow magically turn into any one of her brothers.

*

On the anniversary, there are no parties. There are no toasts. There is still mourning and depression, the feeling that had anyone done anything different, there would be more people to have around the table. Harry sits alone in a Muggle pub, surrounded by people who don’t even bother to notice his scar. He’s simply a skinny man in an old jumper having a pint. He is simply a man waiting for another man.

“Potter,” Snape says as he sits without a sound. He’s forgone his cloak, but the black trench coat stands in well enough.

“Snape,” Harry signals the barman for another pint. He pushes it towards Snape and holds up his own. “To nightmares.”

Snape toasts him with a bitter smile. “And events left unnamed.”

“And Dumbledore.” Harry doesn’t miss the way Snape’s glass wavers, but he doesn’t comment.

“And Dumbledore.”

They drink in silence. Harry throws some bills on the counter and stands slowly. He kisses Snape roughly and starts to walk out. A large man with small eyes grabs Harry’s elbow. He’s taken exception. Harry twists his arm so that his elbow’s free and he has the man’s arm under his control. He leads the man to a table and slams his head against the edge. The fight is on.

It is one long blur of punching and kicking. Biting and spitting. Head-butting and clawing. In those few moments, Harry’s in the war. He never once goes for his wand. In the end, he stands at one side of the room and sees Snape at the other. They are the only ones standing. There’s blood in Harry’s eyes, and he can see the rough state of Snape’s knuckles as he steps around the mess to get to him. He grabs Snape’s hand and pulls him forward, leads him into the street where the air is clearer, and he can remember that no one expects him to fight anymore. That he can walk away from a confrontation. That no one no longer cares that he is the Boy Who Lived. He is simply a man who did his job. There’s no rest for the weary and no praise for the expected. He fulfilled the contract he never signed, and everyone’s done watching him try.

“Potter,” Snape’s voice cuts through Harry’s thoughts and brings him scrambling back to the street.

“What?” He looks at Snape as they pass a streetlamp. There is blood on his cheek but no cut to go with it.

“A doctor, Potter. If you can find one without starting another altercation.”

The venom in Snape’s tone puts Harry fully in the moment, and he glances around to gather his bearings. “This way.” He leads Snape down a side street and then six blocks west, placing them outside a small apartment with dead flower stalks growing in the window box. Harry knocks once and Hermione answers. She barely gives Snape a glance.

“I’ll get Neville.” She leaves the door open as she heads towards the back of the apartment. Harry leads the way inside, staying near the door so as not to dirty the carpet. He watches Snape look around, take in the books and the plants and the general comfortable air to the room.

“I said a doctor, Potter. Not a prat.” But the bite seems a touch false, and it makes Harry grin just a little.

Neville, surprisingly, doesn’t cower at the sight of Snape. Harry thinks it’s partly Hermione giving warning, but he knows most of it is what Neville saw in the war. It’s terribly difficult to patch up the cursed and dying and not lose a little of your shakiness in the face of disapproval, Harry thinks as Neville tuts and sits them on chairs. There’s a lecture being given, but Harry doesn’t listen; just watches the way Neville’s hands move and the way Hermione assists. She says something as well, but Harry doesn’t hear it either. He’s out of his head, determined to watch the way Neville handles Snape’s hands like they couldn’t lash out and strike him at any moment. Watches the way Neville cleans a cut on Harry’s arm and calmly applies a bit of salve.

“No magic for a bar bust-up.” Neville declares with a shake of his head. There’s a bit of Poppy in him, and Harry knows that Snape sees it too. “Perhaps if you’d been properly drunk.” Neville smiles at the admonishment from Hermione and ushers Snape and Harry out the door. Harry sees him kiss her as the door latches, and he turns to Snape with a shake of his head.

“I never thought-“

“You never will, Potter.”

Harry shakes his head. “How I ended up here, of all places, and with you…” He trails off, glances towards the street and crosses when he sees it’s clear. “I’ve hated you for all the important moments of my life.”

“You were meant to.”

They’re silent for a few minutes. Harry leads them into a park and sits on a bench. Snape sits closer than necessary. “We found papers in Dumbledore’s office that explained your role. Hermione tracked me down to show them to me, to explain why I couldn’t kill you until afterwards.” Harry slants a glance at Snape. “And then I couldn’t. Everything I’d done, everything I’d seen done, and there you were, ready to go, and I couldn’t. You weren’t ever really the enemy. Not even when I was a kid.”

“I was the necessary evil.”

“To prepare me for actual evil.” Harry shakes his head. He looks down at Snape’s hand, pale against the bench, and places his hand over it. “I looked you in the eyes, and all I saw was Dumbledore. I saw everything he’d written about you. About how brave you could be, but also how foolish. About the promises you’d made to try and keep me alive long enough to do what I did. I was only where I was because of Dumbledore. Because of you. I couldn’t kill you for that.”

“You’d rather let yourself die slowly, swallowed up in your own grief and ridiculous guilt.” Snape’s voice has the same withering undertone from Harry’s school days. “Always the noble, idiotic Gryffindor, Potter.”

“You’d know from both,” Harry responds as he interlaces their fingers.


End file.
